Frankenstude

The Frankenstude custom car design was originally drawn up by Thom Taylor as a tongue-in-cheek jibe at the Larry Erickson CadZZilla design that was built by Boyd Coddington. Thom said at the time “I was pushing the bulletnose Studebaker thing because it was the most outrageous, ridiculous car,” said Thom. “I wanted to see it done radically and seriously, like CadZZilla™.”

Initially Thom approached Boyd Coddington to also build this fantastic project but Boyd declined the offer. Thom then approached a friend and well-known rod builder Greg Fleury who then put the design forward to Steve Anderson, who was looking for a radical project to be built for him, and he accepted the design.

The project took a long time to complete due to the complexity of the work that was required. The car started with a 1948 Starlight coupe, but then a 1951 nose and hood were added followed by 1950 front fenders and 1947 rear fenders. Every panel of the Studebaker required some work due to the myriad panels that were being used. One major problem to overcome was to make the doors open in a completely different way, they had to move out from the car then lift up to open which was a major engineering problem.

Frankenstude

Frankenstude

Unusually Greg designed the chassis to also act as part of the exhaust system and fitted a Chevrolet L-98 crate motor to the Studebaker which was tuned by Cotrell Racing Engines of Chaska to give approximately 400 horsepower.

Frankenstude

Frankenstude

The interior of the Frankenstude was upholstered in bone-colored leather by Bobby Griffey and Keith Nybo. The inside is kept cool using a Vintage Air air conditioning unit and all the gauges are supplied by Classic Instruments.

Frankenstude

You can read a more detailed description of the car here.